Trudeau underestimates the Freedom Convoy's significance

Jean Chretien used to say that the worst thing one can do in politics is to underestimate one’s opponents. Chretien’s three consecutive parliamentary majorities speak to this wisdom.

Challenged in wisdom, the Trudeau government kicked a hornet’s nest when the prime minister began a trend of insults against those resisting his vaccine policies during the last election campaign.  Trudeau mistook his return to a minority government as an unconditional endorsement to abuse vaccine skeptics. He saw them as a wedge against a flip-flopping Conservative leader. And so effective a wedge it was that Trudeau came back at Christmas with more insults against those he contemptuously calls antivaxxers: They’re racists, misogynists, anti-science.

So, when the Freedom Convoy organised to protest the federal mandates on vaccination, Trudeau saw an opportunity to drive the wedge deeper. But the PM failed to imagine the reactions of people he mercilessly backed into the jobless corner. He failed to imagine…